Sweet and Twenty

An excerpt from the beginning of:

CHAPTER I.

RODEN AND SON, OF IRONTOWN.

Ruri augebis numerum, genus ferratile.
—Plautus.

The great ironmaster, Roden, had been transformed into Roden & Son. Price Roden was one of those men whom we often meet with in this iron age: he had begun life with the legendary three halfpence, and was now the only man who knew the limit of his own wealth. A broad-browed and square-chested man of fifty, was Price Roden at this time; a man whose worst ailments all through l...